Cooper

Cooper (pronounced koo-per or koop-er)

(1) A person who makes or repairs casks, barrels, etc.

(2) A drink of half stout and half porter (obsolete).

1350–1400: From the Middle English couper (craftsman who makes barrels, tubs, and other vessels from wooden staves and metal hoops), which etymologists are convinced would have come from an Old English form but it has proved elusive.  Both the English words are almost certainly related to the Middle Low German kūper, the East Frisian kuperor and Middle Dutch cūper, from the Low German kupe (cask, tub, vat), from the Medieval Latin cūpārius, the construct being cūp(a) (cask or vat) + ārius. (from the The nominative neuter form -arium which, when appended to nouns, formed derivative nouns denoting a “place where things are kept”).

The meaning "craftsman who makes wooden vessels" was originally associated with the word couper, cooper a later construct of coop + er.  Coop is from the Middle English coupe & cupe, from the Old English cȳpe (basket; cask) or possibly the Middle Dutch cûpe (related to the modern Dutch kuip, Saterland Frisian kupe & Middle Low German kûpe), from the Old Saxon kûpa & côpa (cask), related to the Middle Low German kôpe, the Old High German chôfa & chuofa, the Middle High German kuofe, the modern German kufe (feminine form of cask), which most sources trace back to the Classical Latin cūpa & Medieval Latin cōpa (cask) although the OED has cast doubt on this etymology because of the mysterious umlaut in Old English cýpe.  The er agent (noun-formation) suffix is from the Middle English er & ere, from the Old English ere, from the Proto-Germanic ārijaz.  It’s thought a borrowing from the Latin ārius; cognate with the Dutch er and aar, the Low German er, the German er, the Swedish are, the Icelandic ari and the Gothic areis.  Related too are the Ancient Greek ήριος (ḗrios) and Old Church Slavonic арь (arĭ) and although synonymous, actually unrelated is the Old French or & eor (the Anglo-Norman variant is our) which is from the Latin (ā)tor, derived from the primitive Indo-European tōr.

As a surname, the name is attested from the late twelfth century, either from the unattested Old English or a Low German source akin to Middle Dutch cuper , East Frisian kuper, ultimate source the Low German kupe (which became kufe in German), cognate with the Medieval Latin cupa.  A now rare variation is hooper although it remains common as a surname.  Within the profession, a dry cooper makes casks to hold dry goods, a wet cooper those to contain liquids and a white cooper, pails, tubs, and the like for domestic or dairy use.  The surname Cowper is pronounced koo-per or koop-er everywhere except Australia which preserved the fifteenth century spelling but modified the pronunciation to cow-pah.  The Australian federal electorate of Cowper was created in 1900 as one of the original sixty-five divisions and is named after Sir Charles Cowper (1807–1875) who was on five occasions between 1856-1870 the premier of the colony of New South Wales (NSW), Australia.

The Maserati Formula 1 V12, 1956-1957 & 1966-1969

1954 Maserati 250F "short nose".

Remarkably, the three litre Maserati V12 used by Cooper to win Grand Prix races in 1966 & 1967 was an update (developed out of necessity) of a 2.5 litre engine used (once) in 1956.  Maserati’s new straight-six 250F had enjoyed a stunning start to its career, enjoying victories in the first two Grands Prix of the 1954 season but was soon eclipsed by the Lancia D50 and particularly the Mercedes-Benz W196, both with more powerful eight cylinder engines and advanced aerodynamics.

1955 Maserati 250F Streamliner.

Maserati responded and, taking note of the all-enveloping "streamliner" bodywork Mercedes-Benz used on the W196s used on the faster circuits, developed a quasi-enveloping shape, the emphasis wholly on reducing drag (downforce would attract the interest of a later generation).  For the slower tracks, there was also an aerodynamic refinement of the open-wheeler, the “long-nose” which proved such a success it would become the definitive 250F.  The more slippery shapes helped but the problem of the power deficit remained, the advanced Mercedes-Benz engine, built with the benefit of experience gained with the wartime aero engines, used fuel-injection and a desmodromic valve-train which permitted sustained high-speed operation.  Maserati’s engineers devoted time to devise a fuel injection system and borrowed an innovation from the roadsters built for the Indianapolis 500, an off-set installation of the engine in the chassis which permitted the driveshaft to be to run beside rather than beneath the driver, lowering the seat and thus improving both aerodynamics and weight-distribution.

1954 Maserati 250F "long nose".

Two grand prix wins in 1956 suggested progress was being made but, although Mercedes-Benz withdrew from racing after 1955, competition from other constructors was growing so Maserati turned its attention to both chassis and engine.  An all-new multi-tubular space-frame chassis was designed, lighter and stronger than its more conventional predecessor, it retained the double wishbone front and De Dion rear suspension and, perhaps surprisingly, the engineers resisted the more efficient and now well-proven disc brakes, the revised drums instead aided by enhanced cooling.  The new engine was not ready for 1956 so the straight-six was again fielded although the off-set layout was discarded.  The new chassis was called Tipo 2.

Maserati 250F Typo 2, Juan Manuel Fangio (1911–1995), German Grand Prix,  Nürburgring, 1957.

Developed specifically for the Tipo 2 was the V12, its twin camshafts driven by front-mounted gears with the novelty of the Weber carburetors being mounted between the camshafts.  Maintaining a Maserati tradition, a twin spark ignition system was fitted, the 24 spark-plugs fed by two sturdy magnetos, again gear-driven and linked by 24 individual coils.  In many ways the state of 1950s engineering art, the marvelously intricate 2.5 litre V12 produced 320 bhp at what was then a startling 12,000 rpm, an increase of 50 bhp over the 2.5 litre straight six.  With the V12 still being developed, the team started the 1957 season with the 250F Tipo 2 and the straight six.  The faithful six was reliable and proved powerful enough to prevail over the Ferraris and the cars which unexpectedly emerged as the most impressive competition: the British Vanwalls.  The season would be Maserati’s finest, Juan Manuel Fangio winning his fifth world championship (at the age of forty-five) and, had there been a constructors title (not awarded until 1958), Maserati would have taken that trophy too.  The season is remembered also for Fangio’s famous victory in the German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring, in which he broke the lap record ten times in twenty-two laps, the Tipo 2’s straight six clearly good enough.

1956 Maserati 250F Tipo 2 V12.

The success of the straight-six afforded the engineers a wealth of time thoroughly to develop the V12.  After early tests showed the power delivery, although impressive, was too brutal to deliver the flexibility needed in a racing car, attention was devoted to widening the torque curve.  Three Tipo 2 chassis were built for the V12 engine, one ready in time for the final Grand Prix of the year, the symbolically important home event, the Italian Grand Prix at Monza.  A redesigned gearbox housing again allowed an off-set mounting which, although improving weight distribution, made the body sit so low on the frame, two bulges had to be formed in the bonnet to clear the carburetor intakes.  It looked fast and it was.  However, in scenes reminiscent of the troubles suffered by the ferociously powerful Auto-Unions and Mercedes-Benz of the pre-war years, the V12 250F, although fast, suffered high tyre-wear, the rear tyres clearly not able long to endure the abrasive demands of 320 bhp.  Still, it had been an encouraging debut, even if a lubrication problem had prematurely ended the venture.

Lindsay Lohan in Mini Cooper, Mauritius, 2016.

Unfortunately, there would not for a decade be another chance to run the V12 in a Grand Prix.  Financially challenged, Maserati retired from international racing at the end of the 1957 season, the remaining 250Fs sold to privateers either with the straight six or as a rolling chassis.  How competitive a fully-developed Tipo 2 V12 might have been in 1958 will never be known but the credentials were there and, against the dominant Ferraris and Vanwalls, it would have been an interesting contest, the 1958 season the end of an era, the last year either the drivers’ or constructors’ championships would be won using front-engined cars.  On paper, the Maserati V12 was the most powerful engine fielded during Formula One’s 2.5 litre era.

Cooper-Maserati T81, Guy Ligier (1930–2015), Belgium Grand Prix, Spa-Francorchamps, 1967.

Although it did see some use in sports-car racing, the V12’s most (briefly) illustrious second life came when, in 1965, a doubling of engine displacement to three litres was announced for the next Formula One season, the 1.5 litre voiturettes used between 1961-1965 exquisitely engineered but lacking the noise, speed and spectacle with which others were attracting interest.   This created a scramble for competitive engines and with renewed interest in the mothballed V12, Maserati dusted-off the cobwebs.  Cooper adopted it and enjoyed early success with the advantage of being the first team running cars with a full three litres, the reliability of the old V12 adding another edge over others still shaking down their initially fragile new engines.

Cooper-Maserati T81b, Pedro Rodríguez (1940–1971),  German Grand Prix, Nürburgring, 1967.

Soon however, Cooper were running a decade-old design against much newer competition and the antiquity began to tell.  Although some updating had been done, early experiments with six and even a remarkable twelve carburettors quickly abandoned for the even by then de rigueur fuel injection, in that decade, several generations of engineering had passed and the V12 was looking pre-historic.  Unable to change anything fundamental, Maserati bolted on what it could, including 18-valve cylinder heads that added weight and complexity, but did little to narrow the widening gap.  Rumors of 24-valve heads and even three spark-plugs per cylinder never came to fruition but the latter did prompt some wry comments questioning the efficiency of Maserati's combustion chamber design if that many fires needed to be lit.  Maserati withdrew from Formula One during the 1968 season and Cooper soon followed.

Thinspo

Thinspo (pronounced thin-spoh)

Material created, curated or used (almost exclusively in distributed digital form) to inspire thinness or weight loss; a sub-set of the pro-ana community which exists to support those who have chosen to anorexia nervosa as a lifestyle.

2005–2010: The short form of thinspiration, the construct being thin +‎ (in)spiration.  Thin was from the Middle English thinne, thünne & thenne, from the Old English þynne, from the Proto-West Germanic þunnī, from the Proto-Germanic þunnuz (thin) (and related to þanjaną (to stretch, spread out)), from the primitive Indo-European ténhus (thin), from ten- (to stretch).  It was cognate with the German dünn, the Dutch dun, the West Frisian tin, the Icelandic þunnur, the Danish tynd, the Swedish tunn, the Latin tenuis, the Irish tanaí, the Welsh tenau, the Latvian tievs, the Sanskrit तनु (tanú) (thin) and the Persian تنگ‎ (tang) (narrow). A doublet of tenuis, it was related also to tenuous.  Inspiration was from the Middle English inspiracioun, from the Old French inspiration, from the Late Latin īnspīrātiōnem (nominative īnspīrātiō), from the Classical Latin īnspīrātus (past participle of inspīrō).  It displaced the native Old English onbryrdnes (literally “in-pricked-ness”).  Thinspo inspired others forms such as fitspo (encouraging fitness) and blondespo (advocating being blonde) and between thinspo and fitspo, critics noted some overlap, suspecting that in at least some cases the later identity is assumed as an attempt at disguise.  Thinspo is a noun; the noun plural is thinspos.

Thinspo's idealized bone definition.

The companion term ribspro (the short form of ribspiration (known also as bonespo)) is a particular genre within thinspo.  Whereas thinspo material can be long or short-form text, diagrams or images, rinspro is almost exclusively visual, the text limited to perhaps a few admiring or encouraging words and as the names suggest, the focus is on ribcages or other bones proximately highlighted against taut skin.  Backbones, ribs, clavicles and hipbones seem the most favored, presumably because they tend to provide the most definitional contrast but there’s also the suspicion that the particular aesthetic construct of the thinspo community finds there the most attractive, unlike a knee or elbow which, however boney, seems not to be thought photogenic.  Another genre (a kind of applied thinspo) within the community is meanspo (the short form of mean inspiration), from the “tough love” or “cruel to be kind” school of weight loss and this school of thought advocates issuing critical and insulting comments to those considered “insufficiently thin enough”, the rationale being this will convince them to reduce intake, exercise more, purge and thus lose weight.  The thinspo ecosystem has also proliferated thematic variations such as “vegan thinspo” although that to some extent was opportunistic give that the most extreme of the thinspo operatives had long since banished animal products, regarding recommendations like “lean mean” or “chicken strips” as just so much fat.

Like much in the pro-ana community, the thinspo sites exist on a spectrum, those thought innocuous left to continue while any judged to be encouraging eating disorders subject to being shutdown although the efforts undertaken by (and sometimes imposed on) the platforms is a Sisyphean battle, the content shifting as required.  It’s also organic in that thinspo, like all that’s curated by the pro-ana community, is just another function supply-demand curve; the supply of pro-ana content at least to some extent a product of demand and, like much that is on-line, some of the material is blatantly fake, something most obviously detected in the dubious before & after photos which appear with frequent duplication.  Whether there were statistically significant differences in the nature of the content of thinspo and fitspo sites attracted academic interest and there were studies, the results differing in detail (and demonstrating widely divergent results depending on the platform analyzed which was thought to be a reflection more of the degree of success a platform achieved in enforcing its policies than any difference in the collective user profile) but displaying the same general trends: Thinspo sites portrayed body parts with more than twice the frequency of fitspo and posts highlighting bony body features and references to mental illness were overwhelmingly almost specific to thinspo.  Interestingly, the differences between fitspo & thinspo relating to sexually suggestive images, appearance comparison and messages encouraging restrictive eating were not statistically significant, the divergences being striking but almost wholly correlated with the platform on which they were posted.  The more extreme of the forks such as self harm (such as the cutter subset) also appear on thinspo sites.

Thinspo Rules

Thinspirationism: Lindsay Lohan during thinspo pin-up phase, 2005.

(1) Never eat something just because you want to finish it.  Eat only enough to stop the worst of the hunger pangs and don’t eat until sated; those extra bites add up.

(2) Don’t let emotions take over and eat only if hungry.  Stop yourself once you start eating if you know it’s for the wrong reasons.

(3) If you catch yourself in a binge, stop the moment you realize.  Don’t forgive yourself for screwing up; it will only permit you to screw up again.

(4) Every calorie counts.  Review every recipe and remove as many calories as possible.  Where possible, choose the diet or low cal version and drink water (soda water is fine), black tea or black coffee instead of other beverages.  Avoid zero-cal sweeteners (1) because they’re a chemical cocktail and (2) on thinspo goal is to completely cure the body’s natural sugar addiction. 

(5) Don’t feel guilt about wasting food.  The undesirability on environmental grounds is noted but the sooner you change yourself, the better.  Set a goal always not to eat everything you’re served and gradually increase this quantity.  Before long, you’ll be throwing away food without barely a thought.

(6) Eat slowly, savoring each bite.

(7) Drink water during meals, as much as you can manage.   This curbs hunger, is filling, aids in digestion and maintains hydration which has many benefits.  Water has zero calories and can be taken as ice.

(8) Chew your food more, taking at least one 1 full breathe after every bite.  It can vary according to what’s being eater but as a guide, chew 30 times for each mouthful. This not only assists digestion but slows the pace of eating, reducing consumption.

(9) Cut food into smaller pieces which slows eating, can make you you’re eating more and it will makes other people think you ate more, something which can be important.

 (10) Associate unhealthy food with something else: ice cream with saturated fat, bread with carbs, juice with sugar etc.  Concrete visual examples are also helpful: cake as fat sitting in your thighs, chips as a permanent lining in the stomach etc..

(11) Learn from other people eating because while there are individual variations, overall, the patterns should be consistent.  Watch skinny people and apply their principles to your own diet; watch fat people with disgust and revulsion, avoiding what they do.

(12) Decide beforehand how much you are going to eat and never eat more.  If cooking, cook only one serving, so you can’t eat anymore.  The idea model is to have no food in the house and each day but only what you’re that day allowed.  It can be difficult at first but it can be done and if stuck to, it’s a foolproof diet.

(13) Always remind yourself of your goals and rewards.  Keep track of daily nutrient and food goals (some use diet minder journal or cronometers but the best method is whatever works for you).  Weigh yourself twice a day (before morning coffee and just before going to bed), the goal being always to see a lower number than previous weigh-in.  If you have achieved a target weight and operate in a variation of +/- 100g, that is acceptable.

(14) Don’t eat 2½ hours before bed.

(15) You’ll sometimes eat with friends or family so you may need to develop techniques surreptitiously to dispose of food.  You’ll get good at knowing where to sit so one hand can always been unseen and a good trick is to wear clothes with big pockets you can line with plastic bags.

Niche

Niche (pronounced nĭch (U) or nēsh (Non-U))

(1) In architecture, a cavity, hollow or recess, generally within the thickness of a wall and usually semicircular in plan and arched, for a statue, bust, or other erect ornament; in interior decorating the synonym is nook.

(2) Any similar recess, such as one in a rock face.

(3) Figuratively, any similar position such as (1) a place or position suitable or appropriate for a person or thing or (2) a distinct or specialised segment of a market.

(4) In ecology, the role of a plant or animal within its community and habitat which determines its activities and relationships with other organisms.

(5) In contrast radiography, an eroded or ulcerated area.

(6) In Islam, an arrow woven into a Muslim prayer rug pointing in the direction of Mecca (qibla).

(7) In the funeral industry, as cremation niche; a columbarium.

1605-1615: From the Middle English niche (shallow recess in a wall), probably from the Old & Middle French niche (recess (for a dog), kennel), a back formation from nicher (to make a nest), from the unattested Vulgar Latin nīdiculāre, from the Classical Latin nīdus (nest), the words niche & nicher enduring in Modern French.  Niche was a doublet of nidus and nide via the Latin and the related nest via the primitive Indo-European and was related also to nyas.  Some etymologists are not convinced by the notion of a direct Latin root and trace the French niche (recess (for a dog), kennel) to a fourteenth century borrowing from the Italian nicchia (niche, nook) derived from nicchio (seashell).  The dissidents note the link to the Latin mitulus (mussel) but also the lack of any documentary evidence for the change of -m- to -n-.  The origin in the Old French noun derived from nichier is said to come via the Gallo-Romance nidicare from Latin nidus (nest) but it remains one of those insoluble disputes in linguistics.  The figurative sense was first recorded in 1725, the use in ecology dating from 1927 and the contemporary coinings like niche market, multi-niche & niche player are all from the twentieth century.  Niche is a noun and nicher, nichering & nichered are verbs; the noun plural is niches.

Pronunciation

While the origin of niche is of interest only to the profession, the dispute over pronunciation has a wider audience: nĭch (the U version and phonetically nich) or nēsh (non-U and neesh)?  Many dictionaries (especially the descriptive) list both but those which offer only one (the prescriptive) insist on nitch.  The descriptive (and thus linguistically promiscuous) Merriam-Webster’s on-line presence lists several pronunciations for niche: nitch, neesh and nish, in a deliberate attempt to reflect English as it’s actually spoken while Webster’s more prescriptive print edition continues to insist on nich.  The Gallic-influenced neesh is said now to be the preferred US use.

Lindsay Lohan in Falling for Christmas (left) and Irish Wish with Triumph TR4 and body double (right).

In film, a niche differs from a franchise in that the former is a conceptual genre and independent of the characters, the latter thematic and generally dependent on the continuity of at least one character.  Lindsay Lohan’s two recent Netflix productions, Falling for Christmas (2022) & Irish Wish (slated for 2023) are in the rom-com (romantic comedy) niche.

There are two types of dictionaries: prescriptive and descriptive and most modern dictionaries are descriptive, meaning they attempt to describe the language as it’s used, including, explicitly or by implication, all pronunciation variants of a word used by educated speakers.  This approach does upset some purists but this is how English has always evolved, a slut of a language which picks up words which seem useful, uses them as required and dumps them when they’re outlived their usefulness.  It’s tempting to suggest those who read Trollope say nith, those who watch TikTok prefer neesh but if ever that was true,, it probably no longer is so, when in doubt, stick to the classics; niche should be pronounced nich.

Niche, nitch & the W113 notch

So things started with niche and later there came nitch which was (1) an alternative form of knitch (a small bundle), (2) a blend of nick + notch (a dialectal form meaning "a small notch or incision") and (3) a simple misspelling of niche which caught on.  In the collector car market there are many niches and while there’s overlap and some multi-niche players, niches are often siloed, one being the Mercedes-Benz W113.  The W113 was a small roadster of spare, elegant lines which was produced in 3 versions (230 SL, 250 SL & 280 SL) between 1963-1971 and is known among the cognoscenti as the “pagoda” an allusion to the unusual curve of the detachable hard-top, the arc described by the raised side-windows.  The successor roadster (the R107, 1971-1989) used a similar roof design but the pagoda moniker is unique to the W113.

1971 Mercedes-Benz 280 SL (W113, "pagoda").

Also unique to the W113 niche is the cult of the notch.  Part of the charm of the W113 and a proof it came from a time when Mercedes-Benz were rather more “hand-made” than now, were the leaded-seam “fender notches”, small creases in the fender, inboard of the headlights, which workers on the assembly line hand-shaped with tin, their purpose being to ensure the notch matched both the knik in the headlight surround and the crease on the outside of the fender.  That ensured perfect alignment (this was a time when the factory took seriously such intricate details of quality control) but were thought at the time just part of the manufacturing process and not publicized.  Thus, in the decades before the W113 became a collectable and long before originality became a fetish, repair shops when replacing fenders (supplied from the factory without a notch) wouldn’t fashion a notch one to match the one replaced, unaware perhaps even of their existence.  There were tales too of the factory’s notches even being smoothed-out as a “fix” when thought a defect although these stories may be apocryphal.  However, those who have had a replacement fender “notched” exactly to match the one removed will probably still not satisfy the originality police because the inner fender spot welds which affix the fender to the structure are said to have been done in a manner almost impossible to replicate.  It’s metal so it can be done but it’s not easy to convince the experts who judge such things.

By their notches they shall be known: Headlight notches (left & right) on 1970 Mercedes-Benz 280 SL.

Tortoise

Tortoise (pronounced tawr-tuhs)

(1) Any herbivorous terrestrial chelonian reptile of the family Testudinidae (mostly North American) or the order Testudines (elsewhere in the English-speaking world), the body of which is enclosed in a shell (carapace plus plastron), the animal able to withdraw its head and four legs partially into the shell, providing some protection from predators.

(2) Another word for testudo.

(3) Figuratively, a very slow person or thing, the idea explored in Aesop’s ambiguous fable “The Tortoise and the Hare”.

1550s: A variant of various Middle English words including the late fifteenth century tortuse, the mid-fifteenth century tortuce, the late fourteenth century tortuge and  tortose, & tortuca (all of which may have been influenced by the Old French tortue and the word porpoise), and probably from the mid-thirteenth century Medieval Latin tortūca, from the Late Latin tartarūcha the feminine form of Tartarus, from the Ancient Greek ταρταροῦχος (tartaroûkhos) (a mythological spirit, holder of Tartaros (or Tartarus), the land of the dead in ancient stories), the tortoise being regarded as an infernal animal with origins in the depths of the underworld.  The Medieval Latin form was influenced by the Latin tortus (crooked, twisted), that base on the shape of the creatures’ feet.  The Latin tortus was also the source of the English tort (the branch of law dealing with the civil remedies available for wrongful acts).  In Classical Latin the word was testudo, from testa (shell) and the words derived from Latin displaced the native Old English byrdling; the long obsolete synonym was shellpad.  Tortoise is a noun; the noun plural is tortoises.

Detail of an oval multi-foiled dish with chinoiserie motifs, tortoiseshell with gold and mother-of-pearl piqué work (circa 1740) by Giuseppe Sarao (circa 1710-circa 1775) of Naples, once owned by Baron Henri de Rothschild (1872-1947).

The noun carapace (upper shell of a turtle or tortoise; shell of an insect, crustacean etc) date from 1836 and was from the eighteenth century French carapace (tortoise shell), from the Spanish carapacho or Portuguese carapaça, both of uncertain origin but may be related to the Latin capa (cape).  The noun turtle (tortoise) emerged circa 1600, originally in the form "marine tortoise" from the thirteenth century French tortue & tortre (turtle, tortoise) of unknown origin. Etymologists suspect the English turtle may be a sailors' mauling of the French and it was later extended to land tortoises, the sea-turtle noted since the 1610s.

Lindsay Lohan in tortoiseshell-frame sunglasses, Los Angeles. 2012.

The use of the common terms turtle, tortoise, and terrapin vary by geography.  In North America, turtle tends to be the general term while tortoise is used only in reference to terrestrial turtles or those members of Testudinidae, the family of modern land tortoises.  Terrapin is applied usually to turtles that are small and live in fresh and brackish water.  Elsewhere in the English-speaking world, turtle is used generally of the aquatic while tortoise is applied to land-dwelling members of the order Testudines (regardless of whether they are actually members of the family Testudinidae).  One antipodean linguistic anomaly is that although land tortoises are not native to Australia, freshwater turtles traditionally have been called tortoises.  Non specialists often use tortoise and turtle interchangeably and although the most commonly accepted distinction is that tortoises are terrestrial (land-dwelling) and turtles aquatic, it’s not a zoological rule because the box turtle is primarily terrestrial and confusingly, is also called the box tortoise.  One helpful physical indication is that aquatic turtles (like snapping turtles) have webbed feet or flippers whereas turtles known as tortoises typically have stubby, round feet, and their shells are often more domed.

A sea turtle showing its classic tortoiseshell pattern & coloring.

Tortoises are studied by herpetologists, a field which encompasses reptiles and amphibians, the word from the Ancient Greek ἑρπετόν (herpetón) (creeping animal, reptile, especially a snake) +‎ -ologist.  The relatively rare suffix -ologist is the alternative spelling of -logist (one who studies a subject), the construct being -logy (study of) +‎ -ist (the agent suffix).  The suffix -ology was formed from -o- (as an interconsonantal vowel) +‎ -logy.  The origin in English of the -logy suffix lies with loanwords from the Ancient Greek, usually via Latin and French, where the suffix (-λογία) is an integral part of the word loaned (eg astrology from astrologia) since the sixteenth century.  French picked up -logie from the Latin -logia, from the Ancient Greek -λογία (-logía).  Within Greek, the suffix is an -ία (-ía) abstract from λόγος (lógos) (account, explanation, narrative), and that a verbal noun from λέγω (légō) (I say, speak, converse, tell a story).  In English the suffix became extraordinarily productive, used notably to form names of sciences or disciplines of study, analogous to the names traditionally borrowed from the Latin (eg astrology from astrologia; geology from geologia) and by the late eighteenth century, the practice (despite the disapproval of the pedants) extended to terms with no connection to Greek or Latin such as those building on French or German bases (eg insectology (1766) after the French insectologie; terminology (1801) after the German Terminologie).  Within a few decades of the intrusion of modern languages, combinations emerged using English terms (eg undergroundology (1820); hatology (1837)).  In this evolution, the development may be though similar to the latter-day proliferation of “-isms” (fascism; feminism et al).

In the style of late mid-century modern, a serving tray (circa 1970) by Guzzini of Italy, the platter of acrylic & acrylic glass with brass handles.  The use of the tortoiseshell motif on a large flat surface illustrates the possibilities offered by synthetics.  Such things can now be 3D-printed.

The oldest known reference to tortoise shell (also tortoise-shell & tortoiseshell) as a pattern of markings is from 1782 although for decorative purposes it had been prized for centuries.  The material is made from the shell of the larger species of turtles & tortoises and the attractive and unusual combinations of colors and patterning has seen the name tortoiseshell attached to some species, most famously the breed of domestic cat and several butterflies.  The attractiveness of the mottled material, its durability and even the pleasingly natural touch made tortoiseshell a popular material with consumers and it was famously used in inlays by French craftsman André-Charles Boulle (1642–1732) who lent his name to the distinctive style.  As a natural product, the some variations in style and color were especially valued and it was one of those commodities men sometimes killed to obtain.  Such was the demand that some species of sea turtles became threatened although trade in the substance, first restricted by treaty under the CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) process, wasn’t wholly banned until early in the twenty-first century.  The appearance of the natural tortoiseshell is now emulated in a variety of synthetic materials including cellulose acetate and various thermoplastics.

Tortoiseshell kitten.

Despite the way the name is often used, there is no distinct breed of cat called tortoiseshell, the coloring caused by the normal operation of genetics.  The variations are induced by x-linked genes, the process called mosaic expression under which only one x-linked gene for hair color is expressed in each cell, resulting in the mix coloring which is determined by which gene is left “on” in each cell.  In a model familiar in mammals, a female cat has two X chromosomes in each cell (XX) while males have one X and one Y (XY).  In cats, the X chromosome includes much information (genes) including the instructions which determine the color of the coat and female cats, being XX, have two sets of genes for coat color in each cell.  In tortoiseshell cats, these instructions don’t match because there’s one gene for orange one for black fur and during the earliest stages of an embryonic kitten, one X chromosome in every single cell deactivates in a process called lyonization and because the process is entirely random, skin cells retain the instruction for orange fur while others remain coded for black, thus the tortoiseshell pattern.  As a further evolutionary quirk, because the colors are linked to the X chromosome, almost all tortoiseshell cats are female.

Exuberant

Exuberant (pronounced ig-zoo-ber-uh nt)

(1) Of people (and sometimes applied to animals), very high-spirited; effusively and almost uninhibitedly enthusiastic energetic and enthusiastic; extremely joyful and vigorous.

(2) In literary use, of things that grow, abundant, luxuriant, profuse.

(3) In medicine, profuse in growth or production.

1425-1475:  From the late Middle English, from the Middle French exubérant, from the Latin exūberantem (nominative exūberāns), (overabundance; superfluous; extraordinary),  the present active participle of exūberō (be abundant) snd present participle of exūberāre (be abundant, grow luxuriously).  The construct was ex- (out (though here probably in the special sense of "thoroughly)) + ūberāre (be fruitful) which was related to ūber (udder or fertile), from the primitive Indo-European root eue-dh-r-, the original idea being the image of a cow or she-goat which was producing so much milk it naturally dripped or sprayed from the udder.  From the 1510s it was used to mean "growing luxuriantly, and within decades it picked up the idea of describing "an overflowing", a borrowing from the contemporary French exubérance, from the Late Latin exuberantia (superabundance) the abstract noun from exuberare, this extending to the figurative sense of "affections, joyous emotions etc by the mid-seventeenth century (the noun euberancy noted since the 1610s).  Exuberant is a adjective and, exuberance and (the archaic) exuberancy are nouns, exuberating is a verb and exuberantly an adverb; the noun plural is exuberances

Fedspeak, Alan Greenspan and irrational exuberance

Dr Alan Greenspan (b 1926) between 1987-2006 served five terms as chairman of the US Federal Reserve (the US central bank), remarkably, under four presidents from both parties.  Among the Fed’s chairs, he remains the best remembered exponent of a specific fork of officialise: Fedspeak, the jargon-laced technique of expression described by economist Alan Blinder (b 1945) as "a turgid dialect of English" used by Fed chairs to make wordy and vague statements which, while reassuring, are designed not to encourage financial market traders to over-react; some labelled it “constructive ambiguity”.  The coinage is a nod to Newspeak in George Orwell’s (1903-1950) dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), the invented language of a totalitarian state constructed around a simplified grammar with a closed vocabulary set suitable for expressing only the ideas and concepts of the regime.

Blowing smoke.  Fed chairman Paul Volcker appearing before a congressional committee in 1986, a time one could smoke a cigar at such events.

Previous Fed chairs were well-aware those in financial markets attributed great value to statements from the governors and that could lead to some self-fulfilling prophecies.  To try to prevent this, in their public statements, governors adopted Fedspeak to deliver ambiguous and cautious statements, purposefully to obscure and detract meaning from the statement, Greenspan describing Fed-speak as learning “…to mumble with great incoherence.”  He may have been thinking of the (possibly apocryphal) remark by one pope: “When one is infallible, one has to be careful what one says”.  Once, when a US senator told Greenspan he understood what he’d just said, the chairman replied “Then I must have misspoken" and was delighted when different organs of the financial press reported his speeches using headlines with diametrically different meanings.  There’s always been the suspicion the style emanating from the Fed was intended also to deflect the attention of politicians, Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) sometimes complained about the jargon-laden text issued by Arthur Burns (1904–1987; Fed chairman 1970-1978) and the formidable Paul Volcker (1927–2019; Fed chairman 1979-1987) was known to adopt Fedspeak to bat away unwelcome congressional enquiries although he was noted also for plain-speaking about inflation, the money supply and growing structural imbalances in the US economy, forcefully making his views known even to presidents.  In 1987, Ronald Reagan declined to offer Volker another term; perhaps the chairman should have used more Fedspeak.

It’s something of an irony that Greenspan’s best remembered phrase, "irrational exuberance", is really not Fed-speak although the two words were part of a long, complex speech, much of which certainly belongs to the genre.

Clearly, sustained low inflation implies less uncertainty about the future, and lower risk premiums imply higher prices of stocks and other earning assets.  We can see that in the inverse relationship exhibited by price/earnings ratios and the rate of inflation in the past.  But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade?  (Tokyo, 5 December 1996).

Rational exuberance: Lindsay Lohan collecting an award, 2005 MTV Movie Awards, Los Angeles June, 2005.

Immediately after the speech, the local market unexpectedly dropped 3%, exchanges around the world following the Nikkei’s lead.  The reaction however was short-lived and a major slump didn’t happen for another three years, the biggest dip on the NASDAQ (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) composite, the tech-heavy board listing many of the stocks Greenspan thought priced at levels induced by irrational exuberance.   It was only in retrospect the phrase became well-remembered and part of colloquial speech.  Given the history of Fedspeak, "Greenspeak" briefly gained currency but never caught on, presumably because “green” was so vested with connotations in its usual (modern) context and thus easily and erroneously associated with concepts such as “greenwash” & "green-sheen".  Indeed, although Greta Thunberg (b 2003; Swedish weather forecaster) in her critique of COP26 (The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties, Glasgow, October-November 2021) provided "blah, blah, blah" as a memorable sound-bite, "greenwash" remains the preferred (dismissive) term with which to refer to any superficial or insincere display of concern for the environment, especially one issued by individuals or institutions whose activities remained environmentally destructive.  Constructions like "Greenspanspeak", "Greenspannian", "Greenspanistic" or "Greenspanesque" all just too much of a mouthful, Fedspeak had to do.

All the chairman’s men: Dr Greenspan and his presidents

Ronald Reagan (1911-2004; US president 1981-1989).

George HW Bush (George XLI, 1924-2018; US president 1989-1993).

Bill Clinton (b 1946; US president 1992-2001).

George W Bush (George XLIII, b 1946; US president 2001-2009).

Since the Greenspan epoch, the meaning has shifted, Fedspeak now very much in the tradition of Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll's (1832-1898) Alice Through the Looking-Glass (the 1871 sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)) which are two of the most marvelous books ever written

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."

"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all."

The governors claim post-Greenspan Fedspeak is an exercise in imparting meaning in simple, plain-English with no (intended) attempt to obfuscate.